Chapter 97
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 097
Chapter Title: Fallen Dragon (4)
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Every time the dragon flapped its wings once, a fierce gust battered his body relentlessly.
His clothes fluttered like flags. The skin on his face whipped around wildly too. Woojin bowed his head, gripping the machete tightly with both hands.
'How do I stop this bastard?'
Whether its brain had gone haywire or not, the dragon was shooting straight up into the sky without a care.
Thanks to that, Woojin's body was lifted into the air. His two legs kicked futilely in midair. He barely held on, using the machete embedded in the dragon's nape as a handhold.
......Even that was precarious.
The machete trembled and started slipping out. It was because Woojin's full weight was bearing down on it.
'I'm gonna fall at this rate.'
To hold on, he needed to drive it in deeper. With that judgment, Woojin tensed his wrists.
Puuk!!
The machete, half-pulled out, plunged deep into the dragon's nape. The entire blade buried itself, leaving only the handle sticking out. Now it was stable.
'A moment to breathe.'
He'd bought some time.
The instant Woojin thought that...
"Grroooaaarrr!!"
The dragon's roar hammered his ears.
Startled by the pain of the blade driven deeper, it seemed. The dragon began acrobatic maneuvers to shake off its foe.
The dragon spun.
Like a figure skater, it rotated around its head as an axis while soaring upward. Woojin was flung around wildly by the motion, flapping helplessly.
This was some bullshit.
He couldn't even tell which way was up or down. The dragon's movements were so violent that Woojin's possessions kept falling away one by one.
The daggers strapped to his waist. They dropped off one after another, vanishing into the distant rear.
Whoosh—!
Something else just flew backward. It felt oddly empty. Woojin groped around his neck.
"Ah... damn it."
It was the pendant holding Claire's portrait. The keepsake he pulled out whenever he had nothing to do. He'd cherished it inwardly, but now it was gone.
That made Woojin's temper flare hot.
"......Cut it out already."
He clenched his molars hard. His eyes gleamed red, crackling with lightning.
Bzzzt-crackle!!
He poured thunderbolts into the machete. Lightning surged along the blade into the dragon's body. The beast writhed, letting out long screams.
The dragon's wingbeats didn't stop. It had some resistance to thunderbolts, after all.
......But that didn't matter.
Woojin had no intention of stopping either. He relentlessly blasted thunderbolts into it.
'You picked the wrong guy today.'
He cranked the thunderbolt output even higher.
His condition was good enough to keep it up without faltering. His rage was boiling over, and he'd received holy power from the Holy Knights to boot.
Red thunderbolts raced along the dragon's body. Even with resistance, it couldn't endure this brute-force onslaught forever.
But the dragon didn't just take it lying down.
Long bone shards sprouted from its nape in clusters. Moments later, they launched like javelins, hurtling toward him.
Clang, kagang!!
Deafening metallic clashes rang out repeatedly. Woojin was already clad head to toe in dragon scales. He withstood the bone shards without much trouble.
He kept pouring in thunderbolts without pause. With no progress, the dragon changed tactics.
Puuhiiiiaak—!
The dragon opened its maw and spewed poison wildly. Since it was flying forward, the toxin naturally rode the wind backward. Like a fumigation truck spreading smoke as it moved...
Woojin was drenched in the poison. It was potent enough to numb his fingertips.
......Now it was a battle of endurance.
Either the dragon would roast to death from the thunderbolts, or Woojin would succumb to the poison. One of them wouldn't make it back to solid ground alive.
'Let's see who wins.'
He'd come this far; he had to see it through.
The dragon spewed poison, and Woojin unleashed thunderbolts. The two clashed without respite. Even amid this, the dragon kept flapping its wings.
Soaring endlessly upward...
Before he knew it, the thunderheads were close enough to touch. Had they climbed too high? But the reckless dragon pressed on without stopping. It seemed determined to go all the way.
Thud—!
The dragon and Woojin burst through the thunderheads. What greeted them was a clear blue sky. Beneath their feet stretched an endless horizon of clouds.
"......Whoa..."
An exclamation slipped out unbidden.
For a moment, he forgot he was in a fight. Apart from the rare spectacle before his eyes, the situation felt utterly unreal.
'How did I end up here?'
The thought crossed his mind.
He'd planned to live as a hunter, enjoying life at a leisurely pace. But now that he'd snapped out of it, his circumstances were downright bizarre.
What had he come here for?
As he pondered that...
Woojin glanced downward on impulse. The spot where he'd just surged up with the dragon. The clouds there swirled in a circular depression.
Zzt, zzzt—
Red thunderbolts flickered within the thunderheads. He'd passed through them wrapped in thunderbolts earlier, and it looked like the clouds had absorbed the lingering energy.
Woojin reached out toward the thunderheads as if entranced.
Bzzzt-crackle!!
A bolt from his fingertips struck the thunderhead. The lightning vanished into it, sucked inward. Then came an eerie silence.
......Kraroom!!
Suddenly, the thunderhead flushed red and boomed with thunder. The thunderbolt Woojin had fired rampaged through the clouds, amplifying visibly with each pulse.
Lightning grows with clouds. Realizing this, Woojin smirked.
"Ah... so that's how you use it."
He'd finally grasped how to wield thunderbolts.
Woojin snapped his fingers with a click. Each snap sparked like a lighter's flint.
Kraroom, kraroom!
The thunderheads flashed in response to his gestures. Woojin savored the sight leisurely before clenching his fist.
Craaaaaack!!
The sky flushed crimson for an instant.
Like a volcano erupting, massive thunderbolts surged repeatedly, engulfing both dragon and Woojin in flames.
"Grah! Grroooaaar—!"
The dragon charred black. It thrashed in frenzy. Its roar pierced his ears amid the thunder.
Woojin shouted too.
"Die already!!"
He poured more thunderbolts into the machete he'd clung to all this time. It looked like a pincer attack with the bolts spewed from the thunderheads.
......Something snapped with a distinct crack.
The wingbeats stopped. The dragon's eyes, blazing like brimstone, lost their light and dimmed.
He'd killed the dragon.
And... suddenly, the sense of buoyancy vanished, replaced by long-forgotten gravity.
He plummeted downward.
"......Ah, damn it."
A curse escaped like a sigh. Woojin's body tumbled alongside the dragon's corpse.
What now?
Woojin was prepared for most things, but packing a parachute had never crossed his mind. Still, he'd seen this in movies plenty of times.
'Skydiving.'
He'd wanted to try it once.
Like most items on his wishlist, he had zero intention of actually doing it. But here he was—what could he do?
He awkwardly assumed a position.
Belly down, limbs spread wide to slow his descent as much as possible.
Wind hammered his body. Bursting through the thunderheads, the world below came into view. Everything in sight looked like toys, shrunken small.
'Feels weird.'
Growing accustomed to the endless fall, it felt like floating in the air.
'Terminal velocity... or something?'
Even falling from great heights, speed doesn't increase infinitely.
Like raindrops from the sky not hurting when they hit. Falling objects reach a terminal velocity eventually, beyond which they don't accelerate further.
So, if he could endure this speed, he'd survive.
'I've got dragon scales on anyway. Shouldn't get hurt bad.'
Some gear might break or get lost in the impact—that was inevitable.
The machete was still lodged in the dragon's nape. He'd left it there on purpose. Better odds of not losing it that way.
A bigger issue was...
'......I'm dropping into the deep core region.'
The dragon abomination had flown north unchecked. Thus, Woojin's crash site was deep in the Demonic Realm's core region.
So far in, it'd take considerable time to trek back to the barrier.
'Gonna be a hassle.'
With that thought, Woojin steadied his posture.
He had to brace for impact. As he mentally calculated, the ground rushed up fast.
Black forests, ruined fortresses, volcanoes belching black smoke... The tiny toys doubled in size every moment.
Back to the surface.
Kwaaaang!!
The dragon's corpse slammed into the ground first, unleashing a deafening boom. Following it, Woojin landed relatively gracefully.
Bam, thud, kwarruk—!
Like skipping stones, he bounced off the ground a couple times. Then he rolled across the dirt for over ten meters from the impact point.
Woojin lay sprawled out. He gazed up at the sky where he'd been moments ago.
"......Ow."
A groan escaped him.
He wanted to stay lying there, but he couldn't dawdle. Every beast in the area would've heard the commotion.
He staggered to his feet. Dragging one leg, Woojin limped toward the dragon's corpse, which had fallen first.
Since they'd dropped together, it wasn't far. As Woojin approached...
Puak!
He yanked out the machete from the corpse. Fortunately intact, but after prolonged thunderbolting, the blade glowed cherry-red hot.
Like it'd just been pulled from a furnace. Woojin used it to butcher the dragon's body.
Slash, shlick!
Each swing cleaved the dragon's torso easily. Infused with thunderbolts, the machete felt sharper than usual.
After slicing open the chest cavity...
A massive inner core, boulder-sized, came into view. Its surface charred black. Woojin examined it with True Sight.
'Still got some vitality left.'
If another beast ate it, the dragon abomination might revive.
Judging so, Woojin pulverized the core with repeated machete swings. No easy task, given its size.
As he did...
'......Beasts are closing in.'
They'd caught the blood scent and approached.
They circled warily for a while, then seemed to notice Woojin's poor condition. Wounded prey always draws predators first.
Enemies swarmed from all sides. Massive black lions charged at him.
In response, he gripped the machete firm. Each swing etched red comet trails in the air.
Kraroom!
Thunder rumbled.
Not from Woojin. The thunderheads began dumping fat raindrops.
A downpour.
Another unwelcome guest. The rain sapped his stamina faster.
'......Exhausted.'
His condition was worse than ever.
He'd unleashed thunderbolts nonstop, gotten drenched in dragon poison, and free-fallen from the stratosphere. His body was a mess all around.
But he couldn't show weakness.
Woojin deliberately tore the black lions apart more viciously. The pride, witnessing it, hesitated in fear before abandoning the hunt and fleeing.
Another tedious skirmish ended.
'Need a spot to get out of the rain.'
Woojin shuffled along, using the machete like a cane. After a short walk, a decent-sized cave entered his view.
He flopped down inside.
'Just an hour of sleep.'
As he thought that and tried to doze off, footsteps echoed outside the cave again.
Woojin turned his head. What he faced was a spider beast the size of a bull. Sighing involuntarily at the sight.
'Can't even rest in peace.'
As he rose to deal with it...
Swish, swish—
The spider raised a pair of forelegs high, waving them side to side like pom-poms. Bizarre behavior. Woojin blinked at it.
What the hell did that mean?
It didn't stop there—the spider started something even more incomprehensible. It wove webs across the cave entrance. As if sealing it shut.
Woojin watched, mesmerized. He knew he shouldn't let such weirdness slide, but...
'......No hostility.'
So he observed to the end.
Soon, the entrance was blanketed in webs. The spider, task complete, left without a backward glance.
A bit later...
Multiple presences stirred outside. The black lion beasts from earlier. Far more numerous now.
'Brought reinforcements, huh.'
Time for another scrap. Woojin grabbed his machete and prepared.
But the lions inspected the webbed entrance... and turned away without much deliberation.
Entering a spider beast's cave was a waste of time. Just as the first expedition had suffered hunting spider swarms, the lions gave up scouting at the sight of the webs and retreated.
Thanks to that, Woojin could rest easy. The situation left him baffled.
'Why'd that spider beast help me?'
As he puzzled over it...
Woojin soon gave up and lay back down. After a full day of ordeal, he was too drained for his brain to function.
'......Sleep first.'
He closed his eyes.
The Beast Hunter soon fell into deep slumber.